Monday, 5 May 2014

Kampungs - May 4 2014 emails

I got the package with the temple pictures, the picture of our family framed is sitting on my desk :P

From Troy: How many people have you taught? Did you get a new companion?I have taught a lot of people, we have found a lot of members who haven't gone to church in a really long time this last week! And I still have the same companion

I really like Kuching, and I don't ever want to leave! It is a wonderful place and I am learning so much about the Book of Mormon and this Church. Remember to read the Book of Mormon because it really is sooooo important!

We told him about his friend Ronnie being Katie's swim coach this yearRONNIE IS AWESOME PLEASE TELL HIM I SAY HI AND ALSO IF NO ONE PUSHES HIM IN THE POOL YOU ALL FAIL

Happy Birthday Dad! you are getting even closer to the minimum age for stake patriarch! (that's 55 btw)

And told him that he is in second place to Grandpa in the hockey pool so farI have to beat Grandpa :P All of my other picks can still happen!

Brought him up to date on the NBA playoffsRaptors all the way! Except for Miami! but otherwise :P I can't believe that Toronto made playoffs :P

Asked him for any cool stories from this weekCool stories... I don't know all the days kinda mesh into one... like I go and teach people, every day :P

actually I have a few, we were knocking doors, and this guy invites into his house, turns out he is a member who is currently preaching at another church, and he didn't want to speak Malay, and his english was really bad :P

P (who I baptized) went back to Kampung where there is no church so that he could finish school :( but he made us bead braclets with our names in them to remember him, and he said he is going to go on a mission after he is done, so I'm stoked :P )

He is going to come back everytime there isn't school on saturday or sunday. I'm going to email him etc, but he lives pretty far away.

We found another less active family that had been here when I first got here and then left, they were in kampung, building a house, don't really have money for the materials, and the Mom was really sad, cause we went with a few other members, and she was so shocked that all her friends were there, and then realized that they all saw her incomplete house, and she went through a lot of emotions, but they all remembered me, and the mom asked me to baptize her little son, so hopefully they go to church a couple times so that he can pass an interview and I can baptize him!

and I love the people here :P

Those are cool stories. Do you ever get to help out with fixing/building houses?

How far is the kampung from the church?no, cause no one really ever fixes their houses, they just let it fall apart.

theirs is pretty far...They live at about mile 23 (the church is at mile 7) and then they live a little ways into the Kampung... so about 20 miles (so they all use kilometers here, except that they measure distance away from city center in miles... except none of them know what that is and they have to think of it in KM) but that is pretty far when you don't have a car.

So, explain Kampungs again?Everyone wants to live in Kampung. They are all farmers, it's like how grandpa wants to live in Hill Spring. But that takes money. So all the Ibans go to the city for work, and then go back to the villlage.

They would rather be in kampung, it isn't like how we have cabins. It's like if we all lived at grandpa's (like every single Bester ever in the same house) and lived in Calgary in a tiny house until we had enough money to chill at kampung.

Pretty much, kampung is really hard to explain, cause it takes meeting the people and getting to know them to understand why they live in Kampung. Another thing is that a lot of time they wouldn't finish thier schooling, so couldn't really get jobs out in Kuching for a long time anyways.

But the uprising generation is changing things.

It is also due a lot to racial differences. Chinese Malays and Natives.

There are Kampungs everywhere... like there is only a couple cities in Sarawak, everything else is kampung....